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He appealed to evidence taken before commissions which sat some twenty years ago, to account for the present state of Ireland; while he studiously avoided quoting that which was more recently taken before Lord Devon's contenting himself with adopting the oft-quoted description of the sufferings of the peasantry, which is contained in the report, and which has so often before been successfully pressed into his service.
Eldridge Devon's occupation was playing with his country-place and his automobiles. He had recently sold all his horses, and turned his stables into a garage equipped with a score or so of cars; he was always getting a new one, and discussing its merits.
"He whose absence we deplore, Who breathes the gales of Devon's shore; The longer missed, bewailed the more." His mother was Elizabeth Forbes, and he was the youngest of so unusually large a family that the elders had been launched into the world before the younger ones were born, so that they never were all together under one roof.
Had Mr O'Connell alluded to the charges, he must have also adverted to the explanations, and this would not have suited him; for with all his talent for perversion, and, until the appearance of Lord Devon's report, we thought that in this respect he was unequalled, he never could have made so good a thing out of the same materials as he found left cut and dry to his hand, in the passage of the report which he so often appeals to.
Devondale's leading citizens were here, and the spectators knew them all, from those high personages who were presidents of local banks down to little Jimmy Harrigan, who was Barbara Devon's favorite caddie at the Country Club. Unlike most of his fellow guests, Jimmy arrived on foot; but the crowd saw his unostentatious advent and greeted him with envious badinage.
Mr Collis, a gentleman who entertains very strong opinions in favour of the peasantry, is obliged to admit, in his evidence before Lord Devon's Committee, what is borne testimony to by many others, the existence of a reign of terror exercised by the labourers over their employers.
We shall now apply ourselves to ascertain the truth of the latter assertion; and the evidence taken before Lord Devon's Committee, strange as it may appear from the nature of the report, proves to a demonstration, that in those parts of the country where the land is worst and highest rented, the people live in contentment and affluence; and that those parts in which the rents are lowest, and the soil richest, are stained with the commission of the most abominable atrocities; and yet, with those facts staring them in the face, we find the government ready to adopt the suggestions of men who live by levying tribute on the people whose wretchedness they affect to deplore, because the opinions of those persons happen to be backed by a report utterly at variance with the evidence on which it purports to be founded.
Devon's mansion was thrown open early on the eventful evening, but few would come until midnight. It was the fashion to attend the Opera first, and previous to that half a dozen people would give big dinners. He was a fortunate person who did not hear from his liver after this occasion; for at one o'clock came Mrs. Devon's massive supper, and then again at four o'clock another supper.
In their operations the proprietors were necessarily compelled to dispossess some, because the ground they had to dispose of could not possibly, if even given rent-free, support the numbers of inhabitants upon it; but this distressing task has been performed in almost all cases with the most extraordinary kindness; and we venture to assert, that in the whole of the evidence laid before Lord Devon's committee, five well substantiated instances cannot be adduced in the rural districts, in which rent-paying and well-conducted tenantry were evicted; and not one in which any tenant has been removed without receiving some compensation while what is pompously denounced as consolidation of farms, amounts to having increased the holdings of the occupants, in many cases, from a rood to two acres, "and in others to the enormous extent of eight."
Let any man look into Lord Devon's blue-book, and he will find ample evidence in support of our assertion; unhappily, the dicta of those least worthy of credit are generally adopted, because they pander to the popular feeling; and the country is called upon to decide a disputed point, and Parliament to legislate, on evidence to which no private individual would pay the slightest attention, merely because it has been adopted and sanctioned by the report of a government commission.
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